Environmental Ethics

Volume 19, Issue 2, Summer 1997

Varieties of Ecological Experience

I draw on the resources of Husserlian phenomenology to argue that the way humans constitute nature as a meaningful whole by their purposive presence as hunter/gatherers (nature as mysterium tremendum), as herdsmen/farmers (nature as partner), and as producer/consumers (nature as resource) affects the way they respond to its distress—as to a resource failure, as a to flawed relationship, or as to a fate from which “only a god could save us.” I find all three responses wanting and look to a different experience, that of nature as an endangered species, as the ground for a more adequate response of accepting responsibility for our freedom, with the consequence of imposing ethical limits on the way that humans relate to all being, not to humans alone.